DaV8or

It's no big deal. You buy a gear upped plane at a realistic gear up price and then some day you have to sell it at a gear up price. Big deal. All that time you get a great value. A Mooney that flies as good as any, maybe a one piece belly and all at a discount.

Believe it or not, but Airbus actually has a Satellite system in place to track airliners and they named it... you guessed it. Skynet. Actually Skynet 5. I'm not sure what number they have to get to before it's self aware.

Trust your feelings Luke. Use the Force... it flows through us and guides us.

Big Brother is an eventuality. Si Fi writers are seldom wrong. Oh they get the little details and the dates wrong all the time, but the overall concepts more often than not become reality. First there were computers and it was simply about selling you a product to use. Then there was the internet and it was about a way to sell you a product to use. (Mostly porn in the early days!) Then the internet became entertainment and it became all about advertising. Now it is all about data collecting every single thing there is to know about an individual. That is the hot money maker now. One of the consumers of that information is the US government. Yep, ADS-B is another way to collect data on us, as is cell phones, traffic cams, rewards cards, credit cards, On Star type systems in your car, utility meters, DVRs and ultimately the entire internet. Big Brother is building steam. All we need now is a never ending war against a horrific foe in a far off land that threatens our very survival. I wonder where we could find that? Anyhow, I'm just sliding along on this thread drift... never mind me.

I will check the WX early tomorrow, but if it's like today, it's a big maybe. I am just VFR these days. There was a short part of today that looked OK and people were flying, but it didn't last long. Scud running the mountains between Byron and Watsonville is not why I bought a plane. I do want to go though...

Testing the color, the intensity and the viewing angle of a bulb, or fixture is really, really easy. It seems too me that the FAA should just allow a simple demonstration test for each new bulb and fixture, then they would go on an "approved" list for all certified airplanes. In the case of the fixtures, as long as they use MIL spec, or AN hardware and conform to standard wiring practices they would be good to go. No silly STC procedures required. Basically a list of field approvals done at FAA HQ and valid everywhere. This is how the FAA could deal with things like this and save everybody lots of money and time, get new tech out there and be efficient with their budget.

Yes, this North Korean airfield was pointed out to me on another pilot board where I posted the same topic. It does appear to be the closest thing in the world to a runway in a cave. Not the sort of thing depicted in fiction, but close. I am assuming that they start their takeoff roll in the cave and finish their landing roll in the cave. This arrangement does seem to allow for a potential go around. I would love to see operational photos or videos, but I imagine they are pretty scarce. As to the whole JDAM thing, it's not as dumb as it seems. Sure, a couple of well placed JDAMs could trap the planes inside, but they would still have the planes. It has been proven over and over again in combat arenas that runways can be repaired and debris can be removed pretty rapidly, particularly if they are prepared for that possibility. If you think of a traditional airfield and the use of JDAMs, then you can see that you would lose the airfield and the airplanes and it's the airplanes that are harder to replace.

For those dying to have LED bulbs in your nav lights right now, I suggest you leave the colored lenses in instead of going to the superior clear lenses. At least when the plane is tied down on the ramp it won't be obvious to an FAA inspector walking by. I personally will just stick with the incandescent bulbs and hope that one day the price of legal LED replacements come down to reasonable. Either that or someday I will just go experimental. This kind of crap nauseates me.

Remember, he is talking about a "drop in replacement" and by that I think he means a replacement LED bulb. The certified airplanes being delivered today with LED lights have complete LED fixtures and not just different bulbs. Having said that, I think he is wrong to say impossible. It is possible, just nobody really wants to spend the money to do it and get the government's blessing I guess.

Yep. It's going to be an ugly traffic pattern. That place is busy normally and with a break in the weather landing on a weekend, there will be lots of folks other than us turn out. I might try for even earlier than 10 if the weather is nice. I'd rather be sitting on the ground playing games on my phone than trying to squeeze into airborne chaos.

Yep... Gotta get an experimental one of these days soon. This kind of crap is ridiculous. I have this pointless fantasy that the FAA will one day allow us to "de certify " our certified airplanes into the same sort of category as the E/AB folks have, but from what people say who are close to the FAA, that will never ever happen. I've been looking at Velocities lately.

To David M- Post has been deleted as per request. I really hope you reconsider your actions involving yourself, but more importantly, your kids. You need them to be alive and they need you to be alive. Many of us who have been doing this awhile have read loads of NTSB reports of low time pilots in over their head. Mooneys are far less forgiving than 172s to mistakes. Many of us with hundreds hours have had "Oh crap!" moments. I don't really care about the FAA and the FARs all that much per say, what I care about is safety and when you really look at it hard and study the history, the FARs really are written in blood. Most are written for damn good reasons. The reports are full stories of guys that said "This airplane flying thing ain't no big deal.." I say this out of genuine concern, not to chap your hide, or harsh your high. Go get a good instructor that knows Mooneys and get 'er done. Have fun and post back the progress. Fly safe most of all.

No, it was custom made to my specifications by the the avionics shop that did the install. They have a mill and a CNC guy there that lays them out and does them. You just have to tell them what you want.

Fun experiment, but they guy admits in the video that it's not as efficient as the good ol' propeller. I thought for a moment that he could possibly market this as a "safety" R/C plane as it has no spinning propellor to bite people, but then I remember the R/C guys already have ducted fans they use in jet models. So I guess this will have to remain a fun experiment that answers the question- "Can you make a hair dryer fly?"

Interesting. I went to Spruce and checked these out. Indeed the red and green paddle lights come with this FAA/FAR logbook sticker saying things are all good, but they don't seem to offer any such drop in replacement with log entry sticker for the white tail light. When you check out those, they say "This is not PMA" these are not for certified aircraft. They don't seem to offer the quasi legal part for the tail. I find this weird.

It's part of the EI MVP-50 engine monitor. I do really like it, however it has quirks. Mostly with oil pressure and RPM. The issue is, the system is simple logic, so any time any one of the engine parameters ends up in the yellow caution zone, it will alert you. The red, yellow and green zones are set by the factory based on your POH and you can't change it. So in the case of my engine whenever the oil is warm and the throttle is below say 1500 RPM, the oil pressure drops below 60 PSI and 60 PSI is the top of the yellow zone, so I get a warning. I have been told by every Mooney expert that below 60 is normal at low RPMs. What you can do about it is either push the "acknowledge" switch, which shuts the system up for about 10-15 seconds when it will warn you again if the condition hasn't changed, or you can shut the whole system off. So to keep from being nagged to death about a non issue, I leave the system off on the ground and turn it on at run up. In the pattern you will also get the low oil pressure warning as well as the RPM warning because at low throttle settings, even with the blue knob all the way in, the prop will go into the red zone. This too is normal. My solution here is, once on base and the gear is confirmed down during the GUMPS check, I turn the system off. Overall, I really like it and it is effective. I would buy it again for sure and I do recommend it. It just has these quirks to get used to. As to the cost, it was part of the MVP-50 install, so I'm not sure what the price breakdown is. It was extra from EI for the capability and the install required running one extra wire to the audio panel and the installation of the switch in the panel and it's wires, so there was additional labor charges, but in the big picture, just a fraction of the overall cost. Hope this helps.

Welcome Mark! (Flyingbeard) My only comments are, given your experience and needs, I would say pay the extra cash and get a J if you can swing it. You won't be left wanting more.

OK, we've all seen it in the movies. The evil bad organization has a secret landing strip concealed inside a mountain, the door opens up and the plane either flies out of the cave, or it lands into it. My question is, has anyone ever done this in real life? Has there ever been an airstrip inside a cave?

It's not just the bolts and bushings that can cause the play, but also the screw jack itself. The tail has to come off to replace/rebuild that. Not a super huge job, just some time. The thing to do is, pull the access panels, get a friend and flashlight and find out what is moving where. Changing the bolts is super easy. Replacing, or rebuilding the screw jack is moderately difficult. Replacing he bushings if they are gone is bitch.

That's the thing, there is room in the world for both. ICE enthusiasts will still build, restore and maintain vehicles, including airplanes with ICEs in them, just as folks work with steam engines and rotary (the original, not Wankle) type engines. The difference will be that their daily driver/flyer will be electric.

The Li Ion batteries we see today in Teslas, computers, phones, power tools and R/C models, is not the energy storage device that will be used in the aircraft of tomorrow that I'm talking about. Everyone seems to assume it will be a battery of some sort with all the pitfalls of the batteries we have ever known, but it may well be a fuel cell, or maybe even they will finally be able to make a working super capacitor. I don't know, I just know it's coming and I want one. In either case, the Tesla proves my point. The Tesla Model S uses very large batteries that hold a lot of energy. Millions of miles have been reliably driven using them. R/C car batteries fail all the time and don't even come close to the reliability, or longevity of the Tesla batteries. There have been some Tesla failures for sure, but they are far and few in-between and only come to our attention due to the fact that the news media finds a Tesla fire news worthy. Kind of like airplane crashes. The media points out every single crash and so GA airplanes get the reputation as death traps. The media reports every single Tesla fire and so now some people are going "Ah ha!! Told you they were dangerous!" The real truth is, they are the safest car on the road bar none. No one has ever died as of the result of a Tesla fire.

Basically, except my reversing gear is broken. Deferred to annual.

I have not, but my brother has. From what I have seen, the batteries go because they are usually cutting edge battery technology made as cheaply as possible. People into R/C cars tend to want go as fast as possible... but at a reasonable cost. So the battery makers choose the latest technology made by the lowest bidder in China. The results are predictable. Fast cars that sometimes catch fire. The motors and controllers suffer the same fate. Affordability is key in a hobby, many times more important than reliability. Add in the fact that people want spectacular performance and you get people pairing motors, controllers and batteries that never should be used to gather in the interest in performance. I am 100% certain that the full sized vehicles will do many times better than the scale vehicles ever will. Also I will point out that very few, if any R/C car folks that use electric propulsion switch to gas powered due to reliability issues. Trust me, the electric airplane will be unbelievably awesome once the major bugs and set backs get worked out in the car fleet.

Yep, and if the weather is marginal in one or more parts of the state, the number will plummet. If it's IFR at Watsonville, expect about 5 people.

Sure, I have questions since you said you don't mind questions. I love hearing about stuff like this and the people that do these crazy labors of love. How did you get your Norden sight and how much do they cost? How long did it take you to get it finished? Did you have to fabricate new parts, or were there enough spares out there in the world? Does the interface with the auto pilot work? How many of these do you think are left? Did any other air force during WWII ever come up something similar? Thanks again for sharing!